wear me like a locket around your throat (i'll watch you choke)
by C. Cohen
Summary: Ginny finds a coping method. It is not the best one, but she learns to enjoy it, deriving pleasure from where should be none. No Voldemort AU.
1. I - Ginny Weasley

Ginny still hears wisps of Tom in her mind. Ginny discovers a coping method by the third week of "you are a pureblood, sweetheart; these wretched blood traitors shouldn't treat you like that. You deserve silk and gold, my dear" that self harming sends him away, and so it begins - cuts in her stomach, easily hidden by clothes; burn marks in her thighs and nipping the skin of her fingers. Ginny thinks it fair - she deserves this pain as payback for what she did. She complied, and now she paid back with interest. As far as coping methods go, it is not the best one, but she learns to enjoy it, deriving pleasure from where should be none.

By third year it doesn't anymore, and one Daphne Greengrass finds her skinning part of her hand alive. Daphne smirks, fox-like and mysterious, and sits by her side, picking her skinned hand and crushing it between hers.

"You need this, don't you?", Daphne hums, and Ginny barely bites back a moan of pain, feeling Tom recede away. Daphne simply smiles, as if she could read her mind.

It escalates, as it should. Daphne chokes and punches and kicks Ginny, and Ginny has never been more grateful. Tom has never been so far away, and to both of their surprises, Daphne one day takes to kissing her, and Ginny welcomes Daphne, the other girl's teeth biting her lower lip until blood welled up, drinking it up as if she was a vampire, one hand going underneath her shirt. Daphne uses her body as she well pleases, but Ginny doesn't mind; what is her body, if not a receptacle for pain? What else she deserves, but this sort of treatment?

Ginny accepts what Daphne gives her, fingers and tongue and bruises, pleasure mixed with pain, and Tom has never been so hidden, so away. She loves Daphne like Tom would have never loved her, like Tom pretended to love her, but real. Love, Daphne teaches Ginny, is pain and pleasure by the touch of her graceful fingers, and Ginny welcomes it whole.

It's how she gets to know weepy Cho Chang, crying for a dead boy. Cho Chang is soft and quiet, and Ginny wishes she could absorb her pain into herself, for it sounds like the most delicious sort of pain one could taste. The pain of grief seemed like it overpowered all other sorts of pain,and how she wishes to be able to taste it on her tongue. Ginny fell in love, but then, what was love, anyway, for someone so wretched as Ginny? Falling in love with Daphne smells of iron and burnt skin.

Daphne had taught her what love was, but her current definition did not match Cho's soft sobs and quiet smiles in a tear-stained face. Love, Cho teaches Ginny, is soft smiles and quietly holding hands while one sobs and the other says soft nothings into the weeping girl's soft, jet black hair. Love os quietness and silence punctuated by sobbing sounds and laughter where should be none, disheveled hair and runny noses. Falling in love with Cho smells like vanilla and warmth.

Ginny can pretend to be normal until she can't - her heart suddenly split into two different directions.

Daphne was beautiful, fair hair and blue eyes, long limbs and graceful. Cho was beautiful, dark hair and warm brown eyes permanently stained red. Ginny tells Daphne as much, almost gushing lovely words as she receives small burns in her stomach, and Daphne smiles like a fox, once more, digging her fingers into Ginny's scalp, saying she will work it out, and Ginny trusts her.


	2. II - Daphne Greengrass

Daphne Greengrass does not see what Ginny sees in Cho, but a week or so of following them through quiet library halls tells her. It is Cho's soft fragility, a dark cloud of tears staining what once was steel. Ginny sees the pain she so craves, and Ginny wishes she could absorb it. Daphne smiles and nods, and understand what Ginny has sort of. Ginny is a hare, soft and common, but a wonderful prey, and Cho is a swan, graceful and sad, its swan song always the most beautiful thing it could produce before dying.

What Cho needs is not to cry at every available opportunity, but to actually be allowed to grieve. To let out her feelings, instead of repress them for the sake of an image of normality. Daphne approaches Cho one day, all smiles and quietness. Cho looks at her, and Daphne plays her best at being non-threatening, at being a sheep. She is no sheep, and sometimes a sly fox slips through, but Cho trusts Daphne soon after. Ginny joins them when Daphne lets her, and the three are inseparable. Cho is still weepy and sad, and Daphne can see why Ginny fell for her, because soon Daphne falls for her, too. It is Cho's quiet softness, as Ginny had put it, when Daphne asked.

To understand Cho's sadness is to understand the grieving process. Denial had been the first, publically made when the boy's body hit the floor of the Quidditch Pitch. Anger had been second, as Cho told them once - shards of broken glass lining every inch of the floor of her bedroom during summer and matching wildness in her hair and cuts in her fists-, and then it came bargaining. Daphne hadn't witnessed that one, but Ginny told her about the forbidden necromancy books she had seen once or twice in Cho's bag as the girl had searched for something else. Depression, the fourth stage, was what Cho was stuck in, soft tears and red eyes and small sobs. The next stage would be achieved with Daphne's help, and Ginny's too - Ginny would be the most important piece on this -, but for that, Daphne would need to make a move before Harry Potter, whose eyes always followed Cho out of guilt (the boy was a open book, and Daphne had always been an avid reader) with growing emotions. Daphne had never been a fair competitor, too vicious, too eager to make a move and win nonetheless, because she was ready to make sacrifices.

That is why Daphne kisses Cho, and Ginny gets flustered as Cho gets when it happens to her. Cho's kiss tasted of saltwater, and when Daphne, seconds later, kisses Ginny, it tastes like salted chocolate.

"She likes you, I like you, and I like her,", Daphne says to Cho, with a shrug, sitting back in place and watching as things unfold. Ginny nods, quiet and meek as she normally isn't, her usual brashness missing, and Cho is flustered.

Cho takes a deep breath and kisses Ginny, soon after kissing Daphne, and Daphne smirks. The first part was complete, now the ball, as her muggle-obsessed sister would say, was up in Cho's court.


	3. III - Cho Chang

Cho Chang is filled with surprise when her girlfriends - the word tasted oddly in her mouth, like melted chocolate and caramel all at once, and Cho couldn't stop herself from rolling the syllables on her tongue like candy - invite her to a forgotten classroom. The surprise only grows when Cho opens the door to find Daphne choking Ginny, and Ginny seems to appreciate it very much, half naked and littered with old bruises and burn marks.

When Ginny notices, she waves at Cho, and Daphne, as if aware, looks at her with wild blue eyes, letting go of Ginny's throat. Ginny coughs, a necklace of bruises adorning her neck, and smiles, content, as if normal.

"What's going on?", Cho asks, with a frown, and Daphne explains how Ginny used to self harm for some odd reason she refused to talk about, how Ginny exchanged skinning herself and cutting for being abused by Daphne, and how they wanted to invite Cho in their secret reverie.

Daphne and Ginny, almost enthusiastically, tell Cho she should use this as a venting session. To let out all her anger, to let out all her feelings of being useless into Ginny's soft, pliable and complacent body, and to revel in the way Ginny squirmed when in the pain the girl so needed.

Cho knew she should have turned away, how she should have broken things up in that second and weeped for what she thought she could have. But again, wasn't the offer tempting? To do whatever she wanted with Ginny's pale skin, to make the necklace of bruises a bracelet and other jewelry in purple, blue and green? Cho took a deep breath and took off her robe, making Daphne smirk and Ginny smile as if receiving a most expensive gift.

She punched Ginny square in the jaw, and when the girl took a step back, she used the opportunity to kick her legs. Ginny fell to her knees, looking up to Cho as if Cho was something to be worshipped, and Cho kicked her again, pummeling her fists in Ginny's face until it was nothing more than a pile of bruises.

When she was done with beating Ginny, Ginny was smiling and Cho, out of breath, her hair down like a curtain, sealing them off in their own world of pain. Cho's fists were stained with blood and bruises, and she had never felt so alive, as if she was soaring in the skies looking for the Snitch once more. It was almost like breaking every glass she could find once more.

She kissed Ginny, and smiled when she felt Daphne's slender and bruised hands work in the buttons of her shirt, hugging her from behind. Perhaps this could work. Perhaps she could forget what made her cry, perhaps she could move on. No, it wasn't a perhaps, she noticed when Ginny's hands started to take off her skirt; she was already forgetting what the reason for her tears was.

To use and abuse Ginny and receive nothing but smiles was something else; Cho never had experienced such emotion, hands running through Ginny's skin. It was not ruined, despite what it looked like. The texture felt odd in her hands, but Cho adored it, as if it was art come alive, warm and wet with blood. Cho paused on Ginny's skirt, Daphne's hands taking off hers, and when Ginny nodded, a murmured _use me as you please_ , she went on. The skin of her thighs was also littered with burns marks, but Cho didn't mind, kissing every last one until she reached her prize, moaning when Daphne started working on her, fingers finding the most pleasurable spot in Cho's nimble body as if she already knew it just by looking.

Ginny simply smiled, and put her hand on Cho's head, pushing it down weakly, a silent plea to go on, and Cho obeyed. If she bit more than she licked, Ginny didn't seem to complain.


	4. IV - Ginny Weasley

When their bodies are tired and they're all satisfied, they take care of Ginny, even if she feels like she doesn't deserve the gentle wave of healing magic on her body. Daphne always heals her, and in soft, murmured whispers, teaches Cho the spells that will heal damage and leave the marks behind. Her necklace of bruises disappears, but the angry fingerprints on her waist won't. Cho, ever the good raven, takes it all in quickly, soon doing Daphne's work as Ginny's head rests in her lap, Daphne braiding Ginny's hair softly, wand set aside. She can't hear Tom, not even a whisper, and Ginny has never been so satisfied.

When Cho ends healing her, she rests on Ginny's lap, fingers tracing the myriad of burn marks Daphne and Ginny left behind.

"Are you alright, Ginny?", Cho asks, almost afraid of the answer, the warmth of her breath on her burn scars making her squirm a little. She loves the scars as much as Tom hates them, and she loves Daphne and Cho just as much. Daphne was a cruel mistress, who offered a slap and then patted her head like a dog, fingers digging into her scalp and pretending to do nothing as tears welled up in Ginny's eyes, pretending to not know what she did, but Cho, while on the same mould, was different; she patted Ginny's head with just the tiniest bit of too much strength, and her slaps where punctuated by long red marks fingernails left. What was there not to love? The pain was well deserved, and Ginny welcomes it home.

By daylight, they faked normality, Ginny and Daphne holding hands and Cho in tow, Ginny picking petty fights with people who dared to speak of her or of Daphne or of Cho with poisoned tongues, perfecting her hexes and their nastiness. By daylight Ginny sat under a tree with Cho by her side and Daphne's head on her lap, kissing Cho softly and confusing those who thought Daphne was Ginny's girlfriend. By daylight Ginny sat with Daphne and Cho on the Ravenclaw table, Daphne and Cho being sappy and cute and looking at each other like they were the only people in the entire world, further bringing confusion on those who now thought Ginny and Cho were dating.

By moonlight Daphne bared Ginny until she wore nothing but her skin, blue eyes wild and hungry as if she was a fox hunting a rabbit. By moonlight Cho's eyes watched every hitch of Ginny's breath, measuring how much she could go before Ginny was a quivering moaning mess on the floor, begging for release. By moonlight, Ginny was her best self, receiving all the pain and pleasure she deserved. By moonlight, they were all _alive,_ in reds, blues and greens _._


End file.
